When I grow up
by Toff
Summary: Cosette's encounter witha rich lady, and her muses on what she will be when she's older.


The mop rubs up on my hands my hands, and leaves them red and bleeding. I push the mop, getting most of the water on my filthy, bare feet. The water isn't very clean either. Azelma and Eponine don't drink this water. Madame has cleaner water for them. I sit on the floor by the bucket. They don't drink the water. I do. I close my eyes, exhausted. Eponine is beside me now. She is shoving me away. "Get out of sight, out of sight!" she is saying. A lady is coming to the inn, I am informed. Why would a lady come to this rubbish heap, I wonder?  
  
Then I see her. Her blonde hair is swept up beautifully, held together tightly with a beautiful ruby comb. Her dress is as red as the blood that now covers my hands, and it billows out behind her, seeming to go on forever. She smiles at Azelma and Eponine as she walks past them, mentioning something about her own daughters. I want her to notice me too. Slowly I emerge from my spot under the table where Eponine had pushed me. Madame turns around. Wielding a spoon, she sinks her fingernails into my bony arm. It hurts so very badly, and I begin to cry. Tears fall from my eyes, and Madame hits me swiftly with her spoon. The lady's eyes are on her, but they seem to bore right through her. The lady turns to a well-dressed man accompanying her, and my heart leaps, for I think she's going to mention me. Her friend begins to laugh. Maybe it wasn't about me after all. The lady sees the rest of my night, from when Azelma shoves me back under the table to knit, to when I resume my mopping, and finally when I collapse in my little corner to sleep at last.  
  
I arise the next day to see three shining coins glittering on the table where the lady sits eating breakfast. She says to her companion that the coins are for the girls. A sou for Eponine, a sou for Azelma...and maybe, just maybe....I walk up to the table, and see it is a ten-sou piece! Ten sous for me! The lady doesn't seem to notice me as I walk up to her and lay one scabby, filthy hand on her coin. Ten sous!   
  
All of the sudden I am picked up by my hair. It hurts like nothing else has ever hurt me before, and my thin hair is going to give way. I begin to bawl. "You stupid, stupid girl! You filthy slut!" comes a voice. It is not Madame's shrill voice I hear but a duller one. I look up, though any movement sharpens the pain. It is the lady. Madame, wearing a plaster smile, comes out of her kitchen. I see the wooden spoon dangling from her pocket and immediately stop my tears. Oh, the pain! Madame wrenches the sou out of my hand, and yells at me, in front of the lady, for stealing. I thought it was for me, for me! I sob this. The lady laughs in my face, tells me I will never be anything but a whore. Madame likens me to my mother. The lady then leaves, without paying.   
  
Was she really a lady? I wonder this, trying to block out the sting of Maître's strap. It is usually that he ignores me, and I wish that it was this way today, but he is angry that the lady left without giving him his money. It is not Madame I am really afraid of, but Maître. It didn't know it wasn't my money. I didn't know. Think to bring my mind from the stinging pain...What would I do if I was a lady?  
  
When I am grown up, I will be a lady. Never a lady, such as the woman who came here earlier was called. A lady with long flowing tresses, crystal eyes, pale skin. I will live in a mansion, with a lovely husband. He will be tall, with dark hair and eyes. A pensive, intelligent man, who loves nothing more in the world than me. He'll be a doctor, or a lawyer, and bring in enough money to support us. Oh, money wouldn't matter. He could be a pauper, and I'd still love him.   
  
However, I will be a lady in more than money or looks. I will teach school... no, ladies don't teach school. I will do something with children, though. Give money to schools, take in poor children. That's it. My husband and I will fill our large house with as many gamins and gamines as we can fit. Lost children, unloved children.  
  
Like me.  
  
No children will work for me, no-one will work for me against their will. My servants will be paid the very best wages, and would live in the very best quarters, as fine as my own sitting room. They would have sick leave, vacations in the summer. They would be my friends, and they would call me only Cosette. Not Ma'am, nor Mistress Euphrasie, Nor Madame. Never Madame.  
  
Oh, the pain is to much to bear! I think of what I will call my foster children... Christophe...Olivier...Baptiste...Genevieve... maybe even Azelma. She is nice to me, sometimes, when we are alone.  
  
Suddenly, a name pops into my brain from nowhere. Marius. I love the name, and I sound it out softly under Maître's yells. Marius. My first son will be name will be Marius, when I am a lady.  
  
A/N What do you think? Too sappy? Too crappy? Please let me know! I had to write something, I was embarrassed to show my face on ff.net with nothing new since September. So...what do you think???? 


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